all those things you said (inside the silence)
by Shadows of a Dream
Summary: Just some short Steve/Natasha ficlets written in response to Tumblr prompts. Have a prompt you want me to see? I'm on Tumblr as NatashaFreakingRomanoff. Send me a message, and maybe I'll write you a ficlet. 1) Prompt #13: Things You Said At The Kitchen Table 2) Prompt #17: Things You Said That I Wish You Hadn't. Prompt #6: Things You Said Under the Stars and in the Grass. ETC.
1. things you said at the kitchen table

Thanks to sleepanddrinkdietcoke I wrote my first Tumblr Romanogers ficlet! :)

 **Shipper fic prompt #13: things you said at the kitchen table**

"You know," Sam says, as he flips another pancake, "there are better places for a date than in my kitchen."  
Natasha chokes. The glare she gives Sam is the visual equivalent of threatening to impale him with her plastic fork (which, knowing Natasha, she would probably find a way to do.) "This is not a date," she says, coughing into her napkin.  
"Really?" Sam looks at Steve. Blinks. Aggressively smacks the newest pancake with his spatula. "I mean, really?"  
"Not a date," Steve says.  
"Really?"  
"Really."  
"Steve," Natasha says, and grips his wrist. (And maybe his heart skips a beat at the point of contact.) "Put the Maple syrup down."  
Apparently Steve's chest wasn't the only thing that clenched just now, because his hand is squeezing the Maple syrup with such ferocity that most of it has proceeded to drown his pancake. "Damn it," he sighs.  
"Language," Natasha quips.  
"Shut up."  
"That phrase is probably the equivalent of swearing among you upright, moral folk."  
Steve rolls his eyes. "I hate you."  
Natasha twirls her fork between two fingers. "I know," she says, but she's smiling. "I hate you, too."  
"Mutual hate."  
"Basically."  
"It's the foundation of our relationship."  
Sam slams the spatula down on the counter so violently that the entire kitchen all but rattles. "REALLY?"  
"Our friendship," Steve frantically amends. "Friendship."  
"Not a date," Natasha says.  
"Not a date," Steve says.  
Sam chuckles. "If you say so."


	2. things you said that I wish you hadn't

My second fic for the final prompt chosen by sleepanddrinkdietcoke! :)

 **Shipper fic prompt #17: things you said that I wish you hadn't**

They've been partners on S.H.I.E.L.D. missions for the past month and a half, but this was the first time Natasha Romanoff took a bullet to the side for Steve Rogers. Given the tenuous state of their legislated alliance, Natasha thinks he ought to be grateful for the gesture. But when Steve enters her hospital room, ordering the nurses elsewhere, his eyes are blue fire.  
"Agent Romanoff," he says, and grips her hand. "Don't you ever do that again."  
"I saw the shot, and you didn't," she protests. "I knew the angle. I moved so it wouldn't hit anything vital. I didn't have time to warn you, and if I hadn't —"  
"I don't know how fragmented your memory is right now," Steve says, slowly, "but you took three bullets for me. You should be dead. And it would be my fault."  
Natasha laughs; a dry, dead sound. "You have a guilt complex, Rogers. I could take three bullets with my breakfast."  
"I've seen soldiers black out after one."  
"I can take it."  
"Stop lying to me," Steve says through his teeth, "and stop lying to yourself. Three bullets, Natasha. Bruised ribs. Torn muscle tissue. The pain you've been in? No person can just… take that. No person should have to —"  
Something opens up in Natasha's chest, dark and cold. An abyss she's been free-falling into for a lifetime, but now he's cracked it wide open, and he won't like what he sees. She starts talking before she can think.  
"In the Room," she says, in a voice faraway — the voice of a girl bloodied, graceful, forgotten — "they once locked me in a room with a punching bag, and nothing else, for hours. Said to keep punching. I broke my hand after the first two hours. Kept punching for another forty minutes." Her gaze is blank, elsewhere. "Almost blacked out after that. But the hand healed. And it made me strong."  
Steve blinks, rubs his eyes, and she realized he's crying. He stares at her, eyes wide. Hands clenching and unclenching. Mouth opening and closing. "Romanoff —"  
"So don't talk to me," she snarls, "about how much hurt I can take, because I was raised on pain while you were raised on propaganda. You were fighting a war for your country while I was fighting for my own mind. You were an ideal, Rogers. A symbol. I was a nightmare." Her voice cracks; she shuts her eyes. "I wanted to wake up."  
"Natasha."  
Her breathing is so shallow.  
"Natasha, my life is not more important than yours. My life is not more valuable than yours. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs you, the world needs you, to protect it. You're an Avenger — not a Red Shirt. And yes, I understood that reference." Steve gently lays a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe you did know the angle of the bullet — bullets. Maybe you're lying, and you wanted an end. Wanted to wake up. I don't know. I won't ask." His eyes hold hers, clear skies at the center of the gathering storm in her head. "I promise you, Natasha, you're here for a reason. Please don't give up on me before you find out what it is."  
He leaves a moment later, after giving her shoulder a final, reassuring squeeze. And then eyes are leaking, little rivers streaking her cheeks, saltwater pinpricks on the tip of her tongue, and she's shaking and she doesn't know why.


	3. things you said under the stars

**Shipper prompt #6: things you said under the stars and in the grass**  
 _(Prompt submitted by anon)_

The soldier and the spy lie on their backs in the woods, officially tracking an absconding data thief — unofficially stargazing on the clearest night Natasha's seen since Budapest.  
"When I first came to S.H.I.E.L.D.," she says, "I was terrified, and everything was alien. Clint used to take me up to the roof and point out the constellations. Still watching over me, he'd say. Always watching over me."  
Her hair has spilled into long waves these past few months, and it sprawls unbound across the grass now, a hundred waves of scarlet. Steve absently plays with a loose strand, curling it around his finger; she doesn't tell him to stop.  
"Beautiful," Steve says.  
"My story?" she asks.  
"A lot of things."  
They lie in silence. Steve plays with her hair, and at some point her hand reaches up to cover his, and both their arms go very still.  
"Do you ever think," Natasha says, "about who you would be, without S.H.I.E.L.D.?"  
He shrugs. "Honestly? I have no idea."  
"You'd still be a soldier."  
"You think so?"  
"The brutal sincerity. The pull towards devotion. Whatever else you were, whatever else you'd done with your life, you'd always be a soldier."  
Steve's mouth lifts at the edges. "What else would I do, but fight a war?"  
"Anything."  
"Any ideas?"  
"That's the point," Natasha says, rolling her eyes. "You have to decide what you would do, where you would go. The dreams you'd chase. The things you'd change." She knots her fingers together over her heart. "Who you'd want to be."  
Steve looks at her, his hair mussed, his smile lazy, effortless. "Who do you want me to be?"  
Her words, a few months ago; her words, a lifetime ago, before her secrets became targets, before her life ceased to be an elaborate farce. She laughs. "How about a friend?"  
"A friend," Steve says. He sidles closer to her in the grass, their sides flush together, his uneven breath warm against her ear. They haven't touched like this, all lightning in her fingertips, since the hospital. Since everything fell apart and then back together again. "Is that all?"  
"That's a difficult question," she says, eyebrows lifted.  
Steve braces one arm on either side of her body, so that he hovers above her, his sculpted chest rising and falling with rapid breaths above hers. They're near enough for her stuttering heart to break through her ribs and meld with his. His mouth is so, so close; the way it shapes every syllable steals her breath away.  
"Who do you want me to be, Natalia?"  
"A friend," she says, leaning forward, her lips parted, all but brushing his. "Maybe the best friend I've got left."  
"Do you always share breath with your friends," Steve says, his mouth frozen, trembling, over hers, "during conversation?"  
"Conversation? And here I thought we were having an argument."  
"Same difference."  
"You're still arguing with me."  
"You're stubborn."  
"You're patient." Natasha takes a shuddering breath, taking in the same oxygen he's breathing out. Her eyelashes flutter. She's afraid to close her eyes; she's afraid this will all disappear, like days spent on a dance floor that never was, like knives slitting throats she can no longer remember. She shivers. "Kiss me, Steve."  
His fingers slide into her hair first, lace a crown behind her neck, spike her pulse until it's maddening. His eyes glide shut, and only then, gently, sweetly, do his lips meet hers.  
Soldier and spy. Captain and Widow. They're shooting stars, fleeting wishes in the darkness, gone all too soon. But they burn, and burn, and burn.


	4. things you said with no space between us

**Shipper Prompt #16: Things You Said With No Space Between Us**

 _(Requested by anon)_

This is where the story started: a secret, or so the soldier and the spy believed.  
The message that appeared, without prior explanation, on Natasha's cell phone was encoded through a secure S.H.I.E.L.D. line. The coordinates were scrambled so that even an intruder would have been unable to decode them. Natasha and Steve ( _and Maria, because Natasha has lied enough to know that ignoring protocol — if it's to give her closest girlfriend an explanation for canceling their usual Starbucks night — was totally, undeniably worth it_ ) are the only ones who know about their mission today.  
Natasha and Steve arrived at the Chicago hotel under false pretenses. They were Mr. and Mrs. Smith today because Clint is a terrible person who watches too many spy movies and thinks it's hilarious. The luggage they allowed to be carried to their room was weighted, but truthfully empty of the assumed necessities, and will quietly self-destruct in twenty minutes. They checked in for the night, with no intention of staying. ( _The other rooms, too, have all been rented by proxy visitors who don't exist, courtesy of Vision having too much fun on the Internet, since he basically is the Internet_.)  
Steve and Natasha were supposed to be receiving an unspecified package in the eleventh room to the right on the top floor. Instead, they were greeted by a man in full WWII battle garb. His face was drenched in bright red pigment, and when he grinned, madly, he resembled a skull. There was a tiny remote in his fist.  
"Hail Hydra," he says, still grinning, and clicks a button.  
This is where the story stands: the secret made flesh, a smiling skull that turns a hotel into a metal graveyard, a glorified coffin.  
It's the Camp Lehigh bunker all over again. Natasha screams and lunges for Steve, who lunges for her, and the combined momentum of their collision transfers to Steve's shield, which plunges like a meteor through the floor before twisting to cover both their heads as Steve shifts, curls around her like human armor, red and white and blue, and she's praying he won't be all red, red, _broken_ when they hit the ground.  
The building collapses, above and around and below them, like an empire: suddenly, with a _crash_ and a _roar_.  
A fraction of a second before they collide with the ground, Steve swings the shield beneath them. It takes the impact with a deafening _ring_ , like a cymbal. All the world is ash and smoke and rubble — a twisted, ravaged metal skeleton, and they're its beating heart, trapped in an air pocket.  
Steve isn't moving. His legs, his arms, the hollow of his throat are woven around her, a safety net, and _he isn't moving_. She will not lose him.  
She has lost enough things in her life.  
Natasha chokes on a breath. "Steve…"  
He shifts, draws his head back with a groan, so that they're eye-to-eye, every breath all but shared between them. She can feel his racing heart against her chest. They're hopelessly tangled together, limbs intertwined, chest to chest, face to face. There's blood in the rubble and no way to tell who's bleeding. Absently, Natasha thinks Tony would quip, _Are you dying or making love?_  
"Nat." Steve grips her wrist, where her pulse pounds. "Are you okay?"  
"Are you?"  
"Yeah," Steve says, but his eyes (and the way he flinches when she tries to steady him, one palm pressed to his chest) say he has several broken ribs, possibly worse. "Yeah, I'm okay."  
"Then I couldn't be better," Natasha says through her teeth. ( _Sardonic, but she means every word_.) Steve laughs, then curses, because movement _hurts_ , but his laughter shudders through her, slips under her skin, holds her together.  
( _They call Maria for extraction, and it's a short forever before she arrives, but they're together, and together is enough_.)


End file.
